For That Country Feeling, Forget Broward

May 7, 1986|By Peter Sleight

It`s only been five years since I moved to Broward County. But, time and history seem to become compressed here, partly because our history is so short and partly because change is so rapid. A ramshackle fruit stand is demolished to make way for an office building, and nostalgia wells up inexplicably.

Businesses proudly boast: ``Established in 1972.`` Wary consumers are supposed to be reassured by such longevity.

Just a few weeks ago, a lockkeeper`s house on the North New River Canal along State Road 84 was torn down.

It was built in 1912.

Just before it was demolished, members of the Broward County Historical Society swarmed over the house like invading termites, pulling off doorknobs and window sashes for the sake of history.

I was amused by the idea. I`m no relic, at least not yet, but I calculated that my grandfather already had fathered at least one child by 1912. My family already had been in America for 272 years. But the lockkeeper`s house represented Broward County history.

It`s hard to imagine the feelings of Broward`s pioneers, people who have been here for several decades and have seen Broward County grow from a sleepy suburb of Dade County to an area that can barely keep up with its own growth.

Even for myself, wizened with five years of Broward living, it`s hard to cope with the magnitude of change.

This occurred to me the other day while I was driving north on University Drive from Hollywood.

When I first came here in 1981, I often felt claustrophobic from Broward`s ant-colony living arrangements.

I was used to far more open space, the kind of countryside where you can pull off the shoulder of a dirt road and walk into the woods for a while. The only dirt roads down here have rock pits at the end of them.

When I was working and living in downtown Fort Lauderdale, the best I could do when I felt a need for pastoral scenery was to drive out to University Drive. I`d head south toward Davie and look for cows grazing in the pastures.

One of the best stretches was between State Road 84 and Orange Drive. Off to the right were large pastures roamed by the scraggly, raw-ribbed cattle of Florida. On the left were acres and acres of scrub brush. And there wasn`t a strip shopping center in sight.

Driving up University Drive from Hollywood the other day, I noticed how much all that had changed. Everywhere you look, strip shopping centers are popping up. It hit me hardest when I saw that one of my favorite stretches, the area of the Rolling Hills Golf Resort, had gone gangbusters on me.

Rolling Hills, where once a single high-rise rose amid a lush golf course, suddenly had been set upon by the start of a 300-room Royce hotel.

And across the street, where once there was nothing but an uninterrupted fence of scrambled brush, was the beginnings of the massive Loehmann`s plaza, a grandfather of a strip center. Farther up the road was the new Promenade West shopping center, accompanied by new nearby restaurants.

It`s like that all over.

Even on Flamingo Road, once considered an unchangeable boondocks, there is a spanking new shopping center just north of Stirling Road.

I guess there`s no escaping the truth that Broward County has finally become a megalopolis.

Aside from the Everglades, where access by anything other than a boat is a problem, there really isn`t a place to go anymore for those of us who need regular doses of rural medicine.